Putting Your HVAC Customer Data to Work

How HVAC Contractors can use data for sales acceleration

There’s no mistaking it. Even if you own a small business, data is the best evidence that can be used to make decisions. Though it can seem intimidating, sometimes you have to get your hands dirty with your numbers.

Whether you are a HVAC professional, a contractor or a manager concerned with sales acceleration, learning more about your consumer base gives insight that you just can’t get anywhere else. You should take confidence that you have what it takes to figure out more about the people who want your business.

Step 1: Gather Your Data

Begin by gathering the last year’s data for your small business. Your numbers should be in a spreadsheet that you can easily understand. It may seem like a lot of records, but it’s the best way for you to begin keeping track of your data year over year.

Now you can make a decision about how you want to segment your numbers. Some common ways to do this is by job type, ticket size or length of the job. Tracking your data this way is a great place to start a comparison of profits.

Are there any outliers that you see? Perhaps jobs that last longer are actually returning smaller profits than jobs that only take one day. Or maybe you see that all of your tickets of a certain size give you a bigger profit margin.

Profit Margin: subtract your costs from your revenue. Divide this number by your total revenue. Multiply this by 100 to find your profit margin.

You have to know how your profits are effected by different variables, and this kind of math will show you just that.

Step 2: Consider Your Customers

Now that you have seen how job variables have impacted your small business, you should look at how consumer variables influence it. Your customers are the source of your profits, so it’s important to know as much about them as possible.

Customer Lifetime Value: The measure of how much a customer is going to spend throughout their relationship with your company.

When tracking your data, you can look at factors like your customer lifetime value. Figure out how much your customers have spent with your company over time. Were most of your customers new or have they come to your company for services more than one time? This will help you calculate your customer lifetime value.

Tip: for HVAC professionals, customer lifetime value is especially important. Use this data to see if you can turn one time customers into return customers.

Based on the goals of your small business, you can decide if you should take action based on what you find. If you see that customers who come back to your business have a greater lifetime value, you should think about making sure the customers that have only used your business once are very aware that you would like for them to use you again.

Tactics you can use to help warm these customers back up to your business include sending them an email, giving them a call or sending them information about any financial promotions you have for them. HVAC professionals can contact them to make sure their new system is still working within the warranty period and ask if they have any additional services that you could provide to make their home more comfortable.

Step 3: Keep It Up

The best thing you can do for the future of your small business is to maintain your data from this point forward. The more you dig into your numbers, the more they will make sense to you.

As you get more comfortable looking at your data, you can begin seeing how you perform month over month. This will help you quantify seasonal business patterns and so much more.

HVAC professionals and contractors who want to learn more about what their data can do should continue to learn how their numbers effect their small business from their findings.

For even more help with your HVAC business, register for our HVAC Sales and Marketing Master Class.